After what was a month, I returned to Kinokuniya Orchard. This time around I went with my elder cousin and my brother. The place is still a maze and I spent close to an hour looking for Camelot 3000.

I tried searching for the book using the book finding machine. Couldn’t spell Camelot correctly and was too proud to ask how. Searched 3000 and it returned 336 results. I didn’t have time to look through all of it. Went straight to the Graphic novel section and picked up three graphic novels instead.

Halo
It’s a potpourri of 4 short stories. Even has a gallery and visions of the Halo universe. It’s basically fan boy stuff. The art is great and the narration kept to a minimal. Also is in hardcover. I wish I had friends who are willing to buy me this kind of stuff. Sigh.

The Sandman Vol.1: Preludes and Nocturnes
The first of the most acclaimed comics series of the 1990s. So far it manages to stay dark and enchanting at the same time. Has Gaiman’s signature dark humor and its reveries seem hauntingly familiar. Well only 10 more volumes to go.

Stardust
It’s a romance within the realm of Faerie. Fell in love with the novel the first time I read it. Saw this on sale the last time I was at Kinokuniya but decided not to buy it because it wasn’t on shopping list. So I made a new one this time around. Lavishly illustrated by Charles Vess who does a great job in capturing the beauty, oddness and terror of Faerie and lyrically written by Gaiman who is milking me of my money.

Notes
Spent close to $90 on graphic novels. Some consider them a waste. But I am of the few who appreciates this visual medium. Besides it beats reading brick sized novels.

“Children starve while boots costing many thousands of dollars leave their mark upon the surface of the moon. We have labored long to build a heaven, only to find it populates with horrors.”
- Watchmen by Alan Moore

When I first read it, it hit me like a brick on the head. It’s one of those things that makes me sick to my stomach and turn away in disgust. Why? Because every word he wrote is true.

Then I asked myself, how could a man write a comic book that made me question the very nature of our kind. Only then I realized that this wasn’t a mere comic book. It is, in my estimation, one of the most brilliant piece of human literature I had the pleasure of ever reading.

The psychoanalysis of the characters in this graphic novel is unparallel. No other graphic novel that I ever read has reached so deep into the frailty of the human mind. And folks you would do well to remember that Watchmen is the only Graphic novel to have ever made it to Time Magazine’s 100 Best Novels.

Watchmen is more than just another alternate universe episode, it instead builds a bridge between the worlds of comics as we know them and the day-to-day life that we all know firsthand. The heroes are viewed as vigilantes, and the public has as much fear of them as respect. Sure, the uncanny powers have done some good for the average Joe, but what if they decide they want more? What then?

This is where The Watchmen excceds as a mere comic cook. In so many ways, Watchmen transcends the boundaries of its medium. It is, frankly, one of the very few comic stories absolutely deserving of the term “graphic novel;” the plot is rich with detail, the characters as realistic and alive as any have been, the dialogue and progression of story from event to event as tight as one could ever hope. Moore’s work on this story demands rereading, even multiple passes; each visit to the world of the Watchmen reveals new details and secrets that promote the overall felling of the books.

Gibbons, too, contributes a part that cannot be extricated. The art in the books is perhaps the firs to attain the wide screen cinematic feel of an epic movie. As with the plot, there is always something new to discover.

Watchmen, though, is worlds removed from the average monthly offering. The story is filled with intricate detail, a complex but clear structure, and a wonderful examination of archetypes and ages-old moral problems. Yes, it exists in a medium that is traditionally thought of as “low art,” but to miss this masterpiece because you think comics are for kids is a shortsighted failure. If ever there was a reason not to judge a story by its cover Watchmen is it.

For those who are reading Watchmen for the first time, I had better caution that it is slow reading at first for the plot is difficult to understand, the characters take some time getting used to, and there are certain passages in the book that don’t make sense until you reread it. But, ultimately, Watchmen is a book to be read, reread, and savored. Few novels of any kind have had such a hold on my imagination, emotions, and memory.

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November.

Last year I borrowed a graphic novel from my friend Latiff and read it to death. I simply fell in love with Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta. It’s one of the best stand alone graphic novels I have ever read and was pretty excited when I heard the graphic novel was made into a movie.

Last week I came upon news that Alan Moore bashed the Wachowskis - Andy and his transgender brother, Larry – for their limited imagination and muted vision for the movie.

I have watched the film, ironically it was with my friend Latiff, and feel that the Wachowskis are trying to make something that will play as a film, but that evokes the spirit of the graphic novel. The movie is, by design, less complex, less dense. Some of my favorite material from the book is simply gone.

But it is still an entertaining movie to watch if you are willing to forgive the Wachowskis for their short sightedness. I did enjoy the movie and very much like to watch it again.

But as a fan of the graphic novel I am disgusted on how Hollywood always ends up killing the source material. If you don’t believe me, look at catwoman, fantastic four, the horrendous League and Hulk.

And for all of you who are clueless about this movie, I have written a short sypnosis to explain what V for Vendetta is all about.

Sypnosis
Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a young working-class woman named Evey who is rescued from a life-and-death situation by “V.”

Profoundly complex, V is at once literary, flamboyant, tender and intellectual, a man dedicated to freeing his fellow citizens from those who have terrorized them into compliance. He is also bitter, revenge-seeking, lonely and violent, driven by a personal vendetta.

In his quest to free the people of England from the corruption and cruelty that have poisoned their government, V condemns the tyrannical nature of their appointed leaders and invites his fellow citizens to join him in the shadows of Parliament on November the 5th – Guy Fawkes Day.

On that day in 1605, Guy Fawkes was discovered in a tunnel beneath Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder. He and his co-conspirators had engineered the treasonous “Gunpowder Plot” in response to the tyranny of their government under James I. Fawkes and his fellow saboteurs were hanged, drawn and quartered, and their plan to take down their government never came to pass.

In the spirit of that rebellion, in remembrance of that day, V vows to carry out the plot that Fawkes was executed for attempting on November 5th in 1605: he will blow up Parliament.

As Evey uncovers the truth about V’s mysterious past, she also discovers the truth about herself – and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his plan to ignite a revolution, bringing freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption.

Finally after all this months I got my hands on another Paulo Coelho book entitled ‘By The River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept.’ Incidentally this is my seventh Paulo Coelho book I have in my possession now.

As I was reading this book, I started to bookmark certain passages because I felt that they were beautifully written. I can’t believe the simple analogies the author used to illustrate the concept of love.

Here an extract of book, which I found particularly beautiful

…But love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current.

For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn’t even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control…

I have been reading Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys for two weeks now. I finally found the time to finish the book in the early hours of today. Since I was having a 24 hour guard duty yesterday I had all the time in the world to read.

I must say that this is of the most bizarre books I have ever read. Although I read almost all genre its not often I come across a book which is set in a dreamlike world of reality and circumstance.

Anansi Boys is not a big, solid, serious book. But it is laugh-out-loud funny and scary as a spider on your arm. So when birds begin pecking out the hero’s eyes in Anansi Boys, it comes as a surprise when you start to laugh.

Gaiman’s a very daring writer, who goes for broke from the first page. But he does so in such a witty, matter of fact manner that the reader can’t help but be charmed. As Charlie finds out about his father, he also meets the brother he never knew. The whole family magic thing is a bit more intense in Charlie’s world, because his father is Anansi, the Trickster god. And his brother Spider got all the magic.

Gaiman cleverly complicates matters with crime fiction, slapstick comedy, supernatural plotting and mythic storytelling styles.

The miracle is that he does so effortlessly, with a light hand so sure that he can slip from a tale of corporate misdeeds to a Caribbean romance via ghosts and gods. It sounds complicated, but it’s really simple.

Charlie has a family as screwed up as any you’ve ever met, and certainly as screwed up as yours. He’d like to simply get married to the girl he loves and live a relatively normal life. But his brother, his father, and family friends don’t make that an easy task.

Gaiman demonstrates the full range of his skills as a writer with ‘Anansi Boys’. He’s constantly, remarkably entertaining and humorous, even when he’s taking on subjects as serious as the father-son dynamics and the permeation of ancient mythologies into the modern world. The plot here is quite complex, yet it seems utterly transparent.

Gaiman’s plot engine runs on a financial scam, on a ghost story, and on several love stories. But he lays them out with such clarity and logic that the novel streams from one scene to the next. Only in retrospect, thinking back on the novel, and you will think back on it - does ‘Anansi Boys’ seem as complex as it really is.

Gaiman masterfully weaves in a variety of narrative styles in a manner so seamless as to make the novel almost absurdly easy to read. The character arcs are complicated but clear. There are so many of them it almost seems a bit crowded, but every character, major and minor, gets precisely the right amount of attention and detail. Gaiman juggles everything in his pocket universe with precision and a big old goofy smile on his face. No, wait, that smile is on your face.

When an author loves everything in the book as much as Gaiman clearly does, readers will find the whole complicated concoction seems a lot simpler than it is. This is the only potential problem for Gaiman with ‘Anansi Boys’. It functions so smoothly that many readers may never realize that it’s remarkably sophisticated.

Of course, this is the sort of problem that writers should dream about. ‘Anansi Boys’ tells us so much about ourselves in so many witty and imaginative ways that it seems positively bursting. And yet it also seems nicely confined, honed in on a single story, a single family, and a man who at least starts out the novel as single. Anansi Boys is more intimate, picking apart the fears that lock families together.

In this world of petty gods ruining the lives of desperate men, Gaiman is pitiless and arch. He often sacrifices narrative for wordplay and improvisation. You can almost hear his writer’s voice shouting.

In the end it’s Gaiman’s mastery of language that carries the reader through to a satisfying conclusion.